Cover image: Khatia Buniatishvili, piano, and Gustavo Gimeno, conductor, during the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 (Photo: Brandon Patoc)
Benaroya Hall was packed Thursday night for the Seattle Symphony’s concert of Rachmaninov’s second Piano Concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, both superb examples of late romantic Russian compositions, and great audience pleasers. To make things even more exciting, the soloist for the Rachmaninov was the sensational young Russian pianist, Khatia Buniatishvili. Now 31, she was here a couple of years ago and it was clear then that here was a remarkable musician, not only able to encompass extremely difficult technical work with seeming ease but to convey the music’s emotional content to the listener with insightful phrasing.
Guest Gustavo Gimeno conducted in his debut here. This Spanish musician was, until 2012, a lead percussionist with the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam as well as an assistant conductor there, and was catapulted into substituting for Lorin Maazel on the podium of the Munich Philharmonic, then other orchestras, and since then has made a meteoric rise as conductor in Europe, recently being appointed music director to the Toronto Symphony as of 2020.
The soloist in the Rachmaninov has an almost unceasing role throughout. However, in the first movement, while one could see Buniatishvili’s hands rippling up and down the entire keyboard, most of the time she could not be heard over the volume of the orchestra. From the start, Gimeno drew a notably rich, sonorous sound from the orchestra and it was unfortunate that he didn’t ratchet it back enough in this movement so that one could hear the solo role as well.
Balance was far better in the remaining two movements. In the central slow movement, serene moments abounded, particularly when the piano played in duet with the flute, then the clarinet, also the bassoon and muted violins. Buniatishvili’s hands at times hardly seemed to move though the number of soft and beautifully phrased notes which emerged from below these quiet-appearing hands belied that. In quieter sections of the more rambunctious final movement, she achieved the same while at others she gave considerable weight (without banging) to fast and furious chords and roulades, sometimes even rising off her seat to give more energy to her hands.
Here, Gimeno gave her more equal support, the orchestra providing depth and backing while one could hear almost every note she played. Coming back after tumultuous applause she gave a perfect contrast for encore, Debussy’s Clair de lune. She played this more slowly than it is often performed, and more softly so that there was a true sense of murmuring moonlight. The whole was exquisite and one could have heard the proverbial pin drop in the audience.
As if this wasn’t enough, Gimeno directed a brilliantly colorful, expansive performance of the other work on the program, Scheherazade. With its many solos, which he allowed each soloist to phrase without interference, the whole conjured up the many tales from the Arabian Nights—the roiling ocean, the dichotomy between the music for the heroine herself from concertmaster Noah Geller and harpist Valerie Muzzolini Gordon, and the in-your-face roars depicting the unpleasant sultan among others, plus the solos excellently given by different orchestra members: flute, clarinet, horn, English horn, cello, each of whom received individual plaudits at the end. There is no doubt this is a gifted conductor, despite his balance lapse in the Rachmaninov, but it will be worth hearing what he can do with composers such as Beethoven or Mozart, where restraint is a necessary given.
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